


that dirty low down

by piggy09



Series: Project Leto [4]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Gen, Hecka warnings inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 12:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5048104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(She’s not fine. There is a scar on her, something has been taken from her. The sound of Helena’s breath whispering in her ear: <i>they took something from inside of me. I can feel it.</i> Sarah’s fingers probing at the bandage, feeling the wound underneath. The same wound as Sarah’s, only—<br/>—only for this one crucial difference.<br/>Helena’s scar is on the left side.<br/>Sarah’s is on the right.)</p><p>Yet another iteration of Project Leto, or the alternate universe where Sarah and Helena are raised as proclones instead of Rachel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that dirty low down

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: self-harm and self-surgery, in that helena and sarah give each other matching scars with a razor and stitch them up. incest overtones, blood, mentions of medical procedures performed with dubious consent]

Sarah comes back from her oophorectomy with a gaping cut, bandaged but still throbbing; Sarah comes back from her oophorectomy with a head full of cotton wool, almost stumbling over her own feet. The assistant walking her to her door reaches out frightened hands to try to catch her once – twice – too many times, but Sarah lets out a hiss between her teeth and declines the assistance. She’s fine. She’s _fine_.

(She’s not fine. There is a scar on her, something has been taken from her. The sound of Helena’s breath whispering in her ear: _they took something from inside of me. I can feel it_. Sarah’s fingers probing at the bandage, feeling the wound underneath. The same wound as Sarah’s, only—

—only for this one crucial difference.

Helena’s scar is on the left side.

Sarah’s is on the right.)

Helena meets Sarah at the door, the two of them glaring like paired hawks at Sarah’s would-be crutch. The door slams hastily and then they are alone, Sarah’s hand twining around Helena’s hand like that is anything like filling a hole – like it’ll make it better, put the pieces back where they should be.

The sound of their footsteps is jarring as they cross the room – Sarah’s heels, Helena’s bare feet, a heartbeat that’s been knocked off of its axis or the chattering of teeth. Neither of them say a word. Sarah tastes violence on the tip of her tongue and opening her mouth would let it out. Don’t speak. Don’t say anything. Walk across the empty living room, where you were sixteen and sleeping with a boy, where you were fourteen and wearing lipstick for the first time. Don’t stagger as you walk into the bedroom, even though you want to. Don’t cry when your sister closes the door. Sit. Stare at the wall.

Her hands, on her lap, begin to shake. She watches them, watches at the bottom of her vision Helena’s blurred and unshaking hands unbuttoning the buttons on Sarah’s blouse, slow, slow. Her sister pushes aside the fabric, peels off the bandage. Sarah looks at the scar. It’s not that deep, a small pinkish horror. It healed while she was in the hospital, presumably, those mind-numbing days where she stared at the wall and tried to see if she could feel the hole in her. It barely looks like anything. She hates it. She watches Helena’s fingers trace over it, delicate.

“We could,” Helena says, soft. Leaves the rest of the sentence unfinished. Her fingers press to the scar, like she could feel the inside of Sarah if she chose to. Abruptly Sarah wishes that were true – wishes it had been Helena’s hands, Helena’s – Helena’s –

She reaches for her sister, unbuttons Helena’s blazer and the shirt underneath, pushes them both back. There. Right there, that same damn scar. The unmarked skin on the other side makes Sarah sick.

“Could we?” Sarah asks, and Helena ceases her tracing of Sarah’s scar to fold Sarah’s hand in her own.

“Yes,” she says firmly. “But only if you want to.”

Here is the thing: the last time Helena offered this, it was for such a small cut. It healed within days, perfectly, and their skin was the same. This? This will never heal, this will never go away. Every time they saw each other, getting dressed in the morning or entering and exiting examinations, they would _know_. Everyone would _know_.

“Sebastian’s?” Sarah asks weakly. This is a _yes_ ; they both know it is a _yes_. Sarah’s ashamed of herself for having forgotten how to speak.

Helena shrugs, a strange lopsided motion. “Or our own.”

“Sebastian’s has a handle.”

Helena laughs, a small soft exhalation through her nose. “Are we arguing about this.”

Sarah matches the sound, her own laugh a little hysterical. “I suppose. Use his.”

Helena makes a soft _mm_ of agreement, presses her forehead to Sarah’s own for a second. Sarah can smell their shampoo, the traces of perfume Helena had pressed to her temples and neck and wrists. It’s a familiar smell. She relaxes, a few infinitesimal degrees.

“I’ll be right back,” Helena whispers. She slips off the bed, vanishes into the bathroom. Sarah takes off her shirt, looks at her hands. They’re not shaking anymore. She doesn’t know why she thought they still would be. Fear, possibly. But what’s there to be afraid of? They’ve already been violated. This is something like a healing, isn’t it? Isn’t it fixing everything?

Helena comes back, places a bottle of rubbing alcohol on the table, shucks her shirt and blouse as if they didn’t cost more than some DYAD employees’ weekly pay. In her hand she is holding Sebastian’s straight razor. It looks natural there; just another tube of lipstick, just another weapon. Just another object tipped in red. Helena looks at Sarah, tilts her head to one side.

“You do realize this is ridiculous,” Sarah says faintly. “To be clear.”

Helena looks at her hand holding the razor, closes her eyes for a second. Her lips curve into a wry smile. “Yes,” she says. “But then again, what in our life isn’t?”

She opens her eyes again. “If you’re scared,” she says, soft, “I can do my own.”

Sarah stands up fast, crosses the room. “No,” she says, anger smearing through her voice like smoke. “ _Si nous ne nous aidons, quel est le point?_ ” She wraps her hand around Helena’s, takes the razor. It fits in her hand naturally.

(Sebastian left several months ago. The night before he left he was with Helena, at some function or another, and Sarah went through his bags – driven by an impulse she didn’t know, somewhere between the urge for permanence and the desire for some sort of memory. There was something, something about the razor. Maybe the memory of Helena’s whispering in their ear, the last time: _we could use a razor blade_.)

(That is to say: it fit naturally in her hand then, too.)

“Wait,” Helena says. “It’ll drip.”

“The shower?” Sarah asks. Helena grabs the rubbing alcohol and Sarah’s hand, pulls Sarah into the bathroom. They shed layers as they go, like young snakes, until they are nearly bare. Helena puts the bottle down on the counter. They look at each other, blink. In the mirror the faces of their reflections are perfectly blank. There’s a silver flash in the mirror – Sarah looks, sees that Helena’s gotten the blade back. She raises her eyebrows at her sister’s reflection. The mirror-image blinks innocently, rubs a thumb along the edge of the handle – hilt – handle, it’s not a knife.

“You’re very eager to cut me open,” Sarah says softly. This is not a scolding, not necessarily. She remembers her thought from before: it should have been Helena’s hands.

“I’m not frightened,” Helena says.

“Why not?”

Helena puts the razor down, finds cotton balls, douses them with rubbing alcohol. Reaches under the sink for the first-aid kit, pulls out needle and thread. “It’s nothing we haven’t done before. Remember the year we turned twelve? All those vials and vials of blood.”

“Yes,” Sarah says. “I remember.”

“This is less blood,” Helena says. She holds open the shower door; Sarah steps in. Helena kneels down in front of her, something like worship. “Less pain than the surgery. And the game is still ours.”

She holds a finger next to the scar, measuring the distance from Sarah’s belly button. Presses her fingers to her own scars, measures that. _Keep talking_ , Sarah thinks. The air is so silent; she can hear the brush of Helena’s fingers against her skin, her skin. “Do you remember when we had to start shaving,” she says, leaning back against the shower wall. “I thought we were going to have to ask Aldous to buy us razors, and then—”

“—we managed to bribe the secretary—” Helena murmurs. She smears a cotton ball along Sarah’s stomach; Sarah shivers from the cold. “And then you nicked yourself,” Sarah whispers. “Blood all over.”

“You can hardly blame me,” Helena says. “There was no one to teach us how.” She puts the blade against Sarah’s stomach. “Stretch, it’ll pull the skin taut.”

Obligingly, Sarah reaches up. Her fingertips brush against the shower head. The cold of the razor bites into her skin. “No one’s ever there to teach us how,” she whispers. “I can’t decide whether or not that’s a blessing.”

Helena presses down, and Sarah sinks her teeth into her lip. The blade drags, and drags, and drags. “It’s alright,” Helena says, the sound of her voice as distant and cold as a far-away star. “We have each other.”

She leans back, admires her work. “Did it hurt?” she asks, voice vibrating with suppressed emotion.

“Yes,” Sarah says. Helena nods, small, to herself. She cleans the wound off, the motion of her hands slow and soothing on Sarah’s skin. It’s beginning to sting, that skin, with anger and hurt. She can feel it arcing along; it’s a distraction, as Helena grabs the needle. But she still makes a small involuntary sound when it pierces her skin -- wraps her hands around the shower head, holds on. “You’ve never done this before,” she says shakily.

“Except in Miss Barrow's etiquette class,” Helena says.

“I’m not sure that counts.”

“Doesn’t it?”

Sarah tastes blood on her teeth, from how hard she’s been biting down. Licks it off. “No,” she says, “because a piece of cloth is not my skin.”

“I’m glad,” Helena says, the words soft. She leans in close and for one hysterical second Sarah thinks her sister is going to lick the blood off her skin. But no: she bites the thread off, leans back and admires her handiwork. “They’ll hold,” she says. “At least until Doctor Nealon realizes what we’ve done and has conniptions and changes the stitches.”

Sarah steps out of the shower – Helena lets her, obligingly – and looks at herself in the mirror. Helena steps next to her. The red angry wound on Sarah’s skin looks like a sister to the one on Helena’s skin. Once it heals they’ll be interchangeable. Something in Sarah’s skin sighs, settles. A weight’s been lifted.

She holds out her hand for the razor blade.

Helena passes it over; their fingers brush together when she does. Sarah begins to clean the blood off of it with the rubbing alcohol while Helena paces back, forth, back. “Don’t worry,” she says. “Miss Barrow always liked me better than you.”

“Except when I was you,” Helena says lightly, picking up things and putting them down. “She wasn’t especially fond of you then.”

“I used to think she could tell.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You don’t think so?”

“I think she was too involved in trying to separate us, that’s what I think.”

Sarah rethreads the needle. Her hands are still as bone. They wouldn’t shake, not when she’s using them for her sister. She wouldn’t let them. “That’s when they were still hung up on it, all of them,” she says. “I’m ready, step in.”

Helena does, arching onto her toes to step around the tiny pool of blood on the ground. She rocks up, wraps her hands around the showerhead. Sarah wonders if it’s still warm from her own hands.

She kneels, begins the task of measuring. Helena’s stomach rises and falls under her fingertips; her breathing is even. Sarah wonders how her heart sounds, rat-a-tatting in her chest.

“They learned,” Helena says. Her eyes flutter closed when Sarah drags the cotton ball along her skin.

“We taught them,” Sarah says. She can feel a smile coloring her voice. Her hands aren’t shaking. They’re not shaking. The blade is against Helena’s skin, and it’s not shaking. She presses down. A hungry red mouth opens in Helena’s skin; blood begins to trickle down her stomach, along the line of her hip bone. Sarah keeps going. Only a few centimeters. She doesn’t look up, doesn’t want to see the expression on her sister’s face. Instead she concentrates, lets the silence ring – words were the right distraction for her, but for Helena they aren’t necessary. Sarah knows this easy as breathing, easy as Helena’s skin rising and falling under her hand. Her hand a blade.

She stops, pulls the blade back. Watches blood trickle down Helena’s skin. _I did that_ , she thinks, and isn’t sure how she feels. Pride? Horror? Something in between? Mostly she just feels pain, throbbing in twin heartbeats on either side of her stomach. Her legs are cramping from kneeling.

“You were right,” Helena says, and the words are jarring. Sarah starts wiping blood off. She still hasn’t looked up.

“About,” she says.

“It hurt.”

She looks up. Helena’s eyes remind her of starry skies, even though the light pollution in the city means she’s never seen stars. There is something of the void in them anyways. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” Sarah says. She pierces the needle through Helena’s skin, winces.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to do it,” Helena says. Her hand brushes over Sarah’s hand and Sarah can picture it, Helena standing there forcing the needle through her skin over and over. What a sad world, where her sister would have to stitch herself up alone from Sarah’s wound.

“Of course,” Sarah says. “Stop. Let me help you.”

“Alright,” Helena says, voice surprisingly amused. Considering. Another stitch, another tug at the needle through Sarah’s Helena’s skin. “Imagine how horrified Doctor Nealon is going to be,” she murmurs as she goes.

“Why imagine that, when you could imagine Aldous?”

Sarah stops her stitching for a moment to allow herself a quick burst of a laugh. Then back to her ministrations. “Oh,” she says. “We’re going to have to explain this to the psychologist, aren’t we.”

“Yes, doctor, there is a perfectly logical explanation for why my sister and I cut each other open in our bathroom,” Helena says. Sarah ties the knot on the end of the stitches and then leans forward, presses her face against her sister’s hip and laughs. Helena reaches down, tangles her hand into Sarah’s hair. Then she taps Sarah’s shoulder, says, “Up.”

Sarah stands; they take care of the bandages, concocting wilder and wilder explanations for the rows of stitches in their sides. Anything more exciting than the truth – because the truth has no place in a psychiatric session, never has. The conversation carries into the bedroom, as they pull on pajamas. The skin is covered. It’s as if nothing happened. But then Helena drops down on top of the bed, falls over and curls onto her side like she’s guarding some loss in her middle. Sarah lies down next to her, and they curl into each other. Helena’s head is pressed to Sarah’s chest. Sarah leans her cheek on top of Helena’s head. She can feel urgency vibrating under her sister’s skin, a question she won’t put words to.

“No,” Sarah says, “I don’t know what the doctors will do with them.”

Helena sighs that wordless question into Sarah’s skin, curls up tighter. Her thumb is stroking back and forth along her skin; Sarah puts her hand over Helena’s, curls and uncurls her fingers soothingly. Helena settles.

“I have ideas,” Helena says bleakly.

“But we can’t know for sure.”

“They’ll want—” Helena starts, stops. “They – they’ll—” she stops again. Her thumb scrabbles at her skin, agitated. Sarah presses down her hand harder.

“They’ll either dissect them,” Sarah says, with an attempt at calm, “or—”

She stops. Helena huffs out a breath; she’s realized, evidently, that Sarah has come to the same conclusion as her.

“Offspring,” Helena says. “They’ll want to see if it’s viable.”

Neither of them say anything. How do you recover, from something like that?

“Do you remember what you told me, when we were packing our bags,” Helena whispers. “When we left, when we were children.”

The memory’s blurred. Mostly Sarah remembers the blue color of Helena’s sweater, the one she couldn’t decide whether or not to pack. That was when they were still Helena and Sarah, no hyphens. They were younger then.

“Leave it behind,” Sarah whispers. “You can’t take it with you.”

“Put it in a box in your mind,” Helena whispers back. “Don’t think about it. Don’t remember it. Leave it behind.”

“A child,” Sarah breathes.

“We’ll put it in a box,” Helena hisses, the words desperate and strained. “And that box in another box, and that box in another box, and we fixed it, Sarah, and I don’t want to think about it anymore because it hurts.” She pushes her head into Sarah’s chest, insistently. Sarah curls an arm around the both of them, cups her sister’s skull in her hand. Holds her. _A child_ , she thinks to herself. Not even one child. An assembly line of children with their eyes, their smiles, the aching hole in their chests where some sort of family should be. An infinite series of orphans.

“ _Stop_ ,” Helena whines, so Sarah pictures a box instead. A pile of little coffins, high as a tower. She holds them in her hands, each coffin the size of a fetu—the size of a finger, maybe. She’s standing up. She’s grabbing the box from the top of the closet. She’s piling all those boxes inside, and then they’re gone.

She blinks back to herself. Helena’s breathing is agitated – she’s more agitated by the idea of all these babies in pain than she was about pressing a razor blade against her own skin. Her poor sister, trembling over some imaginary suffering.

“Artemis vowed to never have children,” she whispers, like it’s a story she’s been telling and only just broke off. Helena softens, marginally. “Instead she ran, and her arrows were sharp, and all the animals of the world fled before her.”

“Apollo had children, though,” Helena whispers.

“Yes, well,” Sarah says. “It’s not a perfect metaphor.”

Helena lies there, silent. “Tell me about Actaeon,” she says finally. “Tell me how sharp the teeth of his hounds were.” _Sharp as razors_ , she doesn’t say, doesn’t have to. Sarah nudges her, and when Sarah sits up Helena levers herself upwards long enough so she can collapse back down with her head in Sarah’s lap. _Tell me a story_. That’s how it works: Helena gets the rubbing alcohol and the needle to stitch them up, and Sarah tells a story to tie the knot. They’ll be fine. Oh, aren’t they always fine?

“It happened on a mountain,” Sarah says quietly, “stained with the blood of many creatures.” There is a wound on her stomach that is throbbing, blood lightly dappling her bandage, and Helena’s head is in her lap like an animal waiting quietly for its neck to be snapped. They’re going to be fine. They’re going to be perfectly fine.

“Midday had contracted every shadow, and the sun was equidistant from either end of his journey,” she whispers, and waits for that thought to be true.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song that plays during the scene where Helena kills Daniel, since this is basically just a really really messed-up reworking of that scene. (No, it's not "Lowdown" by Boz Scaggs. Believe me. I've checked.)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos/comment if you enjoyed. :)


End file.
